A Walkthrough of ThaiTyper's Practice Modes

ThaiTyper's main learning path is the Skills track: a sequence of focused skills you unlock in order, each building on the last. Around it sit the Words, Sentences, Daily, and Free modes for building fluency. The track is not a suggestion. It is twelve atoms in lib/skills/atoms.ts, each with named prerequisites, and SKILL_PASS at 90% accuracy before the next one opens. Here is what each mode is for and how to move through them without getting stuck on a failing atom.

The trainer maps KeyboardEvent.code through CHARS.kedmanee (or CHARS.pattachote if you flip the board). You can complete home-consonants with the OS still on ENG. That is a feature for week one and a trap the day you paste into Docs: the OS has to match. This walkthrough assumes Kedmanee, because the lesson prose names ด on F and ่ on J. If you type Pattachote, set the in-app board to Pattachote and ignore those names.

The Skills track

The Skills track starts with the home-row consonants and works outward — reaches to the other rows, the vowels, the pre-posed vowel order, the tone marks, the Shift layer, and finally whole syllable clusters. Each skill unlocks the next once you reach 90% accuracy (SKILL_PASS in lib/skills/mastery.ts). 85–89% is labelled almost, not a pass. 98% is mastered. The gate exists so you always practise at the edge of what you can already do rather than drowning in everything at once.

Unlock order is the declaration order of SKILL_ATOMS, which is also the topological order of prereqs. home-consonants has none. reaches and trailing-vowels both wait on home-consonants. stacked-vowels waits on trailing-vowels. preposed-order and tone-marks wait on stacked-vowels. tone-stacking waits on tone-marks. shift-layer waits on reaches. specials waits on stacked-vowels and shift-layer. syllable-clusters waits on preposed-order and tone-stacking. words waits on syllable-clusters. rare-clusters waits on reaches and syllable-clusters. You cannot skip to ไม่ on day one without stacking three atoms that are not automatic yet.

If a later drill feels chaotic, name the missing atom. กเ instead of เก is preposed-order. KeyH and KeyJ both hot is tone-marks. ด instead of โ is shift-layer (dropped Shift on F). ิ/ี swaps are stacked-vowels (B versus U). Running Sentences over those failures practises the mistake. Open the atom, slow the finger, pass 90, then go back.

Home consonants first

You start where your fingers rest. Learning the home-row consonants first gives you an anchor for everything that follows, and they are the fastest group to make automatic because your hands never leave them. On Kedmanee that anchor already includes ก on D, ด on F, ส on L, ว on semicolon, and ง on quote, so early progress feels real: กด, สด, ดาว, งาน are all in reach once า on K is allowed to join from trailing-vowels.

home-consonants drills the resting consonants and leaves G H J K (เ ้ ่ า) for later atoms. That split is deliberate. A beginner who types the whole home row at once mixes three keystroke orders in one session: consonants, a pre-posed vowel on G, and tone marks on H and J. Find the F bump (ด) and the J bump (่) by touch before the first character of every session, even review sessions. If those two are wrong, every other key is one column off.

The neighbour trap on this atom is ก on D versus ด on F. Both mid-class, both home, both frequent. A heatmap that lights KeyD and KeyF is this pair. Slow that left-hand pair until กด and ดก feel different, then let trailing-vowels add า on K. Do not add น on O until this row returns by itself. O is a reach; it belongs to the next atom.

• F bump ด, J bump ่, every session, before the first character.
• home-consonants is ฟหกดสวง. G H J K wait.
• KeyD+KeyF hot: ก versus ด. Slow that pair before adding า.
• กา ดา หา สา วา as the proof the row is a rest, not a hunt.

Vowels, the pre-posed order, and tone marks

Thai's pre-posed vowels (เ แ โ ใ ไ) are typed before the consonant they attach to, even though they are written to the left of it. The track drills that keystroke order in preposed-order, after stacked-vowels, because โ is Shift+F and the combining marks on B U Y N Digit6 should already be visits, not mysteries. เ is G, แ is C, ไ is W, ใ is period, โ is right Shift plus F. เก is G then D. กเ means you typed the consonant first; Backspace will not merge it.

trailing-vowels is า on K, ะ on T, ำ on E — the three that follow the consonant on the line. stacked-vowels is ิ ี ึ ื ั ุ ู. tone-marks is ่ on J and ้ on H. tone-stacking adds ๊ on Shift+U and ๋ on Shift+J. All four marks are the right index. The lesson for ่ ้ is not “tones.” It is J versus H, returning to the J bump after every ้. ข้าว is minus, H, K, semicolon. ขาว is the same without H.

specials (ำ ั ์ ํ) sits later because ์ is Shift+N and ํ is Shift+Y. ำ is also in trailing-vowels as E; meeting it twice is intentional. If you assemble ำ from ะ plus ม, you spelled a different syllable. The vowel guide in this library names the keystroke order in one place; this walkthrough’s job is to say which atom owns which piece so you stop running mixed text over a hole.

• เก = G D. กเ means consonant first. Open preposed-order.
• ไม่ = W comma J. ใจ = period Digit0. ไ versus ใ is spelling plus keys.
• ่ J, ้ H, ๊ Shift+U, ๋ Shift+J. One finger. tone-marks then tone-stacking.
• ำ is E. If you built it from ะ+ม, that is the wrong syllable.

The Shift layer

The rarer tone marks and the less frequent consonants live on the Shift layer. It is the skill most people are tempted to skip — don't. Drilling it directly is far easier than meeting โ, ๊, ฎ, ศ, and the Thai digits cold inside real words later, and you build the opposite-hand Shift habit while the keys are still isolated. โ is right Shift plus F; the base of that key is ด. ๊ is left Shift plus U; the base is ี. A dropped Shift is a named wrong letter, not a mystery.

shift-layer waits on reaches, not on tones. You can be in the middle of tone-marks and already have Shift unlocked if you passed the top and bottom rows. Use that. Ten โ, ten ็ (Shift+H, the shortener in เด็ก, not a tone), ten ๐ (Shift+Q). Same-hand Shift is the mistakes-guide failure: left Shift plus F is how โ never appears. Park the left pinky on A (ฟ) when the letter is on the left hand’s neighbour, and use the right Shift.

Syllable clusters

The later skills assemble whole syllable clusters — consonant, vowel, and tone together in the correct keystroke order. syllable-clusters waits on preposed-order and tone-stacking, so แก้ว (แ C, ก D, ้ H, ว semicolon) should not be your first task. When it is automatic, isolated แ and isolated ้ were finished earlier. words waits on that atom. rare-clusters (ฎ ฏ ฐ ฆ ฌ and the Backslash pair ฃ ฅ) waits on reaches and syllable-clusters so you are not hunting Shift+E for ฎ before ก on D is a rest.

lib/typing/clusters.ts is what the prompt uses to box a syllable: pre-posed vowel swallows the next base, combining marks stack, trailing ะ า ำ follow. Backspace deletes a code point from the end, not “the mark you are looking at.” If cluster drills feel like the engine is deleting the wrong piece, that is this rule, and the input-order article in the library explains the editing side. The skill track’s job is to make the emit order automatic so you stop thinking about it mid-word.

The twelve atoms, in order